It was that cheerful superficiality of Paris that can so delightfully mirror one’s mood when the heart is light—­that can ring so sadly hollow when the soul is sick.  It cut Max with a bitter sharpness; and, like a man fleeing from his own shadow, he fled the shop.

Outside in the dazzling glitter of the streets, the sun blinded him, accentuating the scorching pain of unshed tears; the very pavements seemed to rise up and sear him with their memories.  Here in this very street Blake and he had strolled and smoked on many a night, wending homeward from the play or the opera, laughing, jesting, arguing as they paced arm-in-arm up and down before the sleeping shops.  The thought stung him with an amazing sharpness, and he fled from it, as he had fled from the cafe and its smiling proprietress.

His descent upon Paris was a descent upon a region of beauty.  The sense of summer lay like a bloom upon the flowers for sale at the street corners, and shimmered—­a ribbon of silver sunlight—­across the pale-blue sky.  The trees in the grand boulevards shone in their green trappings; rainbow colors glinted in the shop windows; everywhere, save in the heart of Max, was fairness and youth and joy.

Supremely conscious of himself, adrift and wretched, he passed through the crowds of people—­passed from sun to shade, from shade to sun—­with a hopeless eager haste that possessed no object save to outstrip his thoughts.

It is a curious fact that, to the desponding, water has a magnetic call; without knowledge, almost without volition, his footsteps turned toward the river—­that river which has so closely girdled Paris through all her varied life.  Smooth and pale, it slipped secretly past its quays as Max approached, indifferent to the tragedies it concealed, as it was indifferent to the ardent life that ebbed and flowed across its many bridges.  On its breast, the small, dark craft of the city nestled lazily; to right and left along its banks, the sun struck glints of gold and bronze from spire and monument; while, close against its sides, on the very parapet of its quays, there was in progress that quaint book traffic that strikes so intimate a note in the life of the quarter.

It is a charming thought that in the heart of Paris—­Paris, the pleasure city—­there is time and space for the vender of old books to set out his wares, to lay them open to the kindly sky, to tempt the studious and idle alike to pause and dally and lose themselves in that most fascinating of all pursuits—–­ the search for the treasure that is never found.  Max paused beside this row of tattered bookstalls, and quivered to the stab of a new pain.  Scores of happy mornings he had wandered with Blake in this vicarious garden of delight, flitting from the books to the curio shops across the roadway, from the curios back again to the books, while Blake talked with his easy friendliness to the odd beings who bartered in this open market.